Thirteen is an oddball number, which is why witches like it so much. The ideal coven: the god and his twelve companions.

“Six and seven,” witches used to say: a greeting, back in pre-Blessed Be days. For reasons obvious to those in the know, this was a covert expression of Craft identity. In Italy they said “Five and eight” instead, for the same reason.

The ancestors counted in tens and twelves. Twelve was the “long ten,” as 120 was the “long hundred.” That explains why the teens don't start til thirteen; it used to be “three-ten.”

So thirteen means, “the cycle begins again.” Thirteen is both an end and a beginning.

So potent a power is Yule that the Thirteen Nights cast a sort of shadow before them, a kind of inverse Yule.

These are the year's darkest nights. In the darkness, monsters assemble, more and more each night. It is the season of the troll.

Troll Night they call it, the thirteenth before Mother Night. At the doorstep, they lay out offerings, but the doors themselves they ward and hammer-sign from within. Here and no further, the wardings and offerings say.

Word is, the trolls will be particularly bad this year. Bad governance, or the threat thereof, always angers the beings of the land.